Young Yang and Jamie Choi, owners of Choicolate Artisan Chocolates, are living the sweet life. The husband-and-wife team opened the shop in March 2010 and has been building a steady audience of chocolate lovers by adding unique flavors, sugar-free bars and vegan options.

The South Korea natives enlisted the help of Beth Bowling after about a year of opening. First as an intern, and later as a full-time employee, Bowling has helped develop flavors that Western palates enjoy.

With Halloween and Christmas around the corner, the trio is getting ready for the start of its busy season. They sat down to talk about owning a chocolate shop, how recipes are developed and what menu items customers can expect.

How did you get into baking?﻿

JC: I graduated from St. Philip's. They have both culinary arts and a baking and pastry program, and I did both of them. Each of them are two-year degree programs and it took me three years to finish both of them. I started baking in 1999 as a hobby and I loved it. It was really fun. This was when I was still in South Korea, where I'm originally from. After we got married, we moved to another city because of his job, so I thought I had to start something new. In Korea, there's a national baking certificate, where you take classes and then a written test and a baking test. So I have a baking certificate from Korea. Because of his job, we came to the states and then after he got a job in San Antonio, I decided to go to school again.

JC: Chocolate was his idea. It's a very important ingredient in baking and pastries, so while I was going to school, we were thinking about having our own business. We decided to focus on one product. In San Antonio, there aren't many chocolate shops. We wanted to go with artisan chocolate — beautiful, European-style chocolates. I did some more chocolate training at the Chocolate Academy in Chicago owned by Barry Callebaut, a European chocolate company. It's a short certificate program where we focused on chocolate.

What has changed since you opened?

JC: We started with truffles and bonbons and now we have toffee, sugar-free bars and a vegan product. For toffee, we thought we needed to go with more variety. We added the sugar-free bars and the vegan products based on our customers asking us.

How does research and testing work?

JC: For the first 10 flavors, Young and I tested more than 20 flavors. For the added flavors, we do a lot of brainstorming and testing, especially in the summer, which is our slowest time.

BB: It's fun. We basically come up with a general idea of what to make and then Jamie will come up with the recipe, try it and taste it and think of ways to make it better or add other spices or flavors. We usually end up making things four or five times before we decide it's the recipe we're going to use.

More Information

YY: Having Beth on board is really helping us because we have an Asian cultural background so (that's reflected) in the chocolates like open sesame and the ginger cinnamon. Beth knows more about the Western side. It works very well. Sometimes we'll taste things and they might be a little too sweet, but customers think it's fine.

What flavors are people asking for?

YY: We started with 10 flavors, and now we have 20 flavors. We try to keep the balance, some classic, traditional flavors like our bittersweet truffles and milk vanilla truffles, and the unique flavors like mango habanero, lavender, strawberry balsamic, (and) open sesame, which has sesame seeds, sesame oil and caramel. We can tell a little of the change of trends.

How often do you make the chocolate?

JC: We make it every day. I schedule different chocolates daily. It takes about two days: the chocolate has to set and then we dip them.

What have you learned in the last two years?

YY: From the business side, we learned a lot. Before we opened the shop, we knew it wasn't going to be a huge chocolate factory, but we might have been a little too confident. On the operation side, we had some trial and error. But we also said whatever happens, chocolate comes first. We don't want to sacrifice the quality of chocolate for profit.